


Irene Adler: Relationship Advice?

by MizLizzy



Series: MizLizzy's Hopes and Dreams for Sherlock & John [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Love, Love Confessions, POV Irene Adler, Pining, Pining Sherlock, Post-Reichenbach, Relationship Advice, Sad!Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:39:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3301163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizLizzy/pseuds/MizLizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock wants to rush to London and pick up the pieces of his old life, but he has a feeling it's not going to be as easy as he would like it to be. He knows what he wants. He knows WHO he wants. He just has no idea how to go for it. So he calls in a favor from someone who owes him big time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irene Adler: Relationship Advice?

24 MONTHS EARLIER

Los Angeles, California  
  


5:37 p.m. _I’M NOT DEAD. LET’S HAVE DINNER. –SH_

5:42 p.m. _I SHOULD FLAY YOU ALIVE FOR THIS. BUT INSTEAD I GUESS WE ARE EVEN. WHERE? WHEN?_

5:45 p.m. _CHENGDU TASTE. VALLEY BLVD. ALREADY HERE, BOOTH IN THE BACK. –SH_

5:50 p.m. _BE THERE IN 15._

 

Sherlock gazed across the table at The Woman. She gazed back, quietly. Finally, she smiled. “I have to know how you did it.”

“Did what?” Sherlock smirked.

She looked at him with an exasperated expression. “How could you fall, in those circumstances and yet, be here, now? Very much alive?”

Sherlock leaned toward her, and spoke quietly. She nodded occasionally as he told Irene, now going by the name Meredith, how he had joined her in the ranks of the supposed-to-be-dead. After he sat back in the chair, she shook her head at him. “You. Amaze me.” Her eyes were luminous, she licked her lips (their usual red). Sherlock felt…something…an ache. Floating in front of his face was not the beautiful Meredith, he gazed through her, past her, and pictured sandy blonde hair liberally laced with silver, stormy blue eyes, firmer lips being licked as a much deeper voice spoke, whose praise moved him in ways that The Woman’s never could.

“You’re not with me right now, are you?” Meredith tilted her head, and smiled with understanding. “You’re thinking of John.”

Sherlock blinked, and focused on Meredith. He sighed.

“I didn’t know where else to go. I have some decisions to make. There are…feelings…involved. And you know I’m not much good in the feelings department.”

“Oh, I think you feel much more than you ever wanted to let on, Mr. Holmes. It’s just as much of an intriguing mystery to try to understand why you repress everything, just as intriguing as one of your closed-room mysteries.”

He sighed, and his mouth twisted with frustration and disdain. “Sentiment. Loss of control. These are things I cannot abide in myself. It’s a weakness, and you of all people should know it.”

Meredith looked down at her hands, clasped on the table. “So, you need to work out a feeling, or feelings, and you came here to see me. Very interesting.”

Sherlock’s lips compressed for a moment, then he said, “You have a mind somewhat like mine. I figured your advice would be the closest to something that I could remotely work with. And, like you said, you owe me. Your life as Meredith seems to be agreeable to you. Will you advise me?”

She tucked the strands of her now-blonde hair behind her ear, and her bright green eyes (color contacts – part of the new persona) twinkled at him. “Ahhh! Mr. Holmes, you amaze me. You really _are_ gay. You came here to talk about _man problems_! You came here to talk about John.” She looked 3 parts gleeful, 1 part wistful.

Sherlock huffed, and started to rise from his seat. Meredith reached out and grabbed his hand, “No. Don’t go. I’m only teasing. I’m just surprised that I could possibly have anything on which to advise the great Sherlock Holmes. Sit. I’m listening.”

Sherlock sat, swallowed, and looked at her in silence, as if daring her to continue. She stopped looking, and started _seeing_. She took in his overall appearance. His hair was significantly longer, and pulled into a queue at the back. His cheekbones were even more prominent. She saw the faded colors of a healing bruise just at the opening of his silk shirt. He’d had some sort of injury. Where HAD he been all this time? Her stomach turned to ice, and she realized something very traumatic had happened to her favorite detective over the last 12 months.

When she’d read in the paper about his suicide, she felt a grief that she had never known it was possible for her to feel. Anger at the reports of his being a sham, which she _knew_ to be untrue. And mixed in was a deep sympathy for John Watson. She just knew that whatever feelings she had nudged into view when she last saw Watson, were most likely never acted upon. She ached with sympathy for the pain he must have felt upon losing Sherlock, and never having uttered the words she knew lay deep within his heart. She understood that feeling very well. She felt no grief for Sherlock’s words unsaid, because he was gone. But she felt very sorry for John, left behind. She knew exactly what he had lost.

Now, sitting here in this crowded, trendy restaurant, having a surreal reunion with the man, himself, she let her mind speed through the months this man had been out there, alive, but where? If he was not dead, did that mean that Moriarty was also…not dead? How could she sit here, in the open, talking with Sherlock like a couple of girlfriends, if Moriarty was out there, possibly stalking both of them? Her mind was spinning with the progression of her thoughts.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, I’ve been in hiding. Yes, it’s been dangerous. Yes, I’ve been injured. John is fine, I check on him occasionally. Well, fine is a generality, he did seem to suffer from my absence there for a while but seems to be recovering … nicely.” Did she detect a trace of bitterness in the voice? “I’ll tell you where I’ve been, but first let me comfort you with the knowledge that Moriarty is, indeed dead. You don’t have to look over your shoulder, at least not for that one. He was most assuredly dead when I saw him last.”

She shook her head, awestruck at how he had deduced exactly where her thoughts went from start to finish.

“This must be what living with you was like for him.” She wasn’t sure she blamed John for the simmering anger always underneath the surface when she encountered him. She was sure life with Sherlock Holmes must be a yo-yo for the emotions. But, like John, she felt the frustrations were completely worth it for the thrill of just being allowed to be a companion to this man. He…was…fascinating. After all they had been through, she felt a real affection for Sherlock. She owed him her life, and he was here now, in need. She could not judge him. She did understand, at least she thought she did, more than everyone with possibly the exception of Mycroft.

“Well, living with John wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either.” Sherlock steepled his hands underneath his lips and looked at the table.

Meredith looked at his bruised clavicles in the open collar of his shirt. Much, much too prominent. So. First order of business. She looked up and flagged a waiter. “Sherlock, let’s eat.”

“I don’t want to eat.”

“Well, we need to at least order food so that they don’t ask us to leave.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. He picked up and scanned the menu. “Another ice water. Toothpick Lamb.” He looked at Meredith while she ordered Fish in Green Pepper Sauce. The waiter nodded and retreated to the kitchen. She would get some food into him. She would do it in John’s honor.

“So, we need to talk about these…decisions…you need to make. And we need to talk about these _distasteful_ feelings you’re having to take into your consideration. But first, I need to understand how we’ve come to this pass. Now that I know HOW you died, I want to know WHY you died. I want to know where you’ve been. Fill those blanks in, and I may be able to help you with these decisions.”

An hour or so later, they sat over half empty plates and Sherlock’s voice had trailed into nothing. Meredith’s eyes were wide.

“Well. You HAVE been busy.”

“Yes.”

“And John has no idea you’re alive.”

He closes his eyes, as if in pain. “No.”

“But you want to go back home. And you want John.”

Sherlock’s eyes flew open. “Yes. And…well…John…”

“…has moved on?”

Sherlock’s eyes seemed to sparkle in the light, he blinked, and the effect disappeared. “Yes. It appears he may be moving on. There’s…a woman…he left Baker Street and he is living with her now. Her name is Mary. It is going well, from my deductions from afar. I haven’t gotten too close, yet. I have asked Mycroft about it, but his gaze is infuriatingly smug whenever I ask about John.”

“And you never once considered letting John know you were alive, all this time?” She looked at Sherlock accusingly.

“I didn’t think it would be wise for him to know and Mycroft quite agreed.”

“You’d let Mycroft advise you on that, but now that you’re ready to go home and reunite with John, Mycroft’s advice won’t do? As they say out here, I call bullshit. Could you not have told John?”

“Until I had neutralized all the threats to John, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson, I couldn’t take that chance. Do you think John would have stayed home and continued to live as normally as possible if he knew I was out there? Do you think he wouldn’t have just heedlessly charged into anything I was doing? I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk…” He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t risk him.” The shiny effect was in his eyes again and he shook his head from side to side as if to rid himself of a painful thought.

She reached out and touched his wrist. He stilled and looked up at her and she was amazed at the window she was getting into Sherlock’s life. She had honestly thought he was an automaton, before. It had been a personal challenge to try to get a reaction – any reaction – out of him. But she now senses that underneath the controlled exterior, was a raging ocean of feelings that he would rather die than reveal. He must have been hurt deeply at some point. He was so uncomfortable with the feelings he was experiencing, she thought he must not even know how to identify what they were.

“How do you feel about this Mary?”

“I am grateful to her for making him smile again. But I hate her too. Nothing will ever be the same now. I can’t go home to 221B and pick up the threads of my life again. Some of them have been pulled out and now my life will always be frayed.”

“It’s not Mary’s fault, you know.”

“I know. It’s mine. I can’t even be angry at her because had I not left, perhaps Mary would not be in the picture.”

She smiled. “I very highly doubt she would be in the picture, Sherlock. You take up all the space in the room. I presume his relationships never lasted very long because he very obviously has a higher priority. But this time, you left him. You ripped that presence out of his life, and he did what he had to do to fill that space back up. I don’t think you’ll be able to waltz back in that easily. My advice? You really need to approach this with caution. I recall Dr. Watson being somewhat tightly wound.”

They talked further into the evening, quietly. As they walked separate ways down Valley Boulevard, Meredith could only hope that Sherlock would heed her advice and approach John in a controlled environment and deal with his shock carefully. But Sherlock had never been one to use kid gloves with anyone before, she wasn’t sure if he really knew how. Sherlock knew what he wanted to happen, but variables concerning this woman, Mary, meant that he had several possible courses of action to take, and he would decide once he arrived in London for good. _Good luck, Mr. Holmes. I think you’re going to need it._


End file.
